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 In the early summer of 1981 I took what’s probably my favorite solo trip, to the West Coast and back via VIA. I had just finished graduate school and desperately needed to loaf a little and get the cobwebs out of my head. The dollar was strong, VIA was subsidized, and I had a small cashed-out pension to spend, all of which added up to a good deal. I was able to travel first-class for the first time since I was a child in a sleeper. Since there was no direct rail service from Chicago to Winnipeg, I decided to get on the westbound Super Continental at Toronto. I started out with a commuter-train ride on the C&NW to Northwestern Station, transferred to Amtrak at Union Station, and headed for Detroit. There’s something you should know about me: I’m a jinx. Every time I’m in Canada some key component of the economy is on strike. This time it was the tunnel bus to Windsor, so I taxied across the Ambassador Bridge and holed up a couple of hours in a bar prior to catching the train for Toronto. My first-class seat on the Windsor-Toronto train was certainly comfortable, and the waitstaff brought us sandwiches, but unfortunately some engineer must have skidded a wheel because it was a rapid bump-bump-bump all the way. Gave me a headache and a half! In Toronto, I had about 45 minutes until the Super Continental left, but after just a few minutes’ wait they let us on the train. The man in line behind me learned I was an American when we chatted. I couldn’t understand the woman in front of me, who was talking to friends. The guy behind whispered that she was a “Newfie” which accounted for the brogue. Although VIA had taken over the long-distance CN and CP trains almost three years earlier, the train was still very much the Super Continental, with its diagonally striped engines and heavy steel cars with black-and-white trim. I had a snug roomette and got my headache under control. Many Canadians say the shield is boring but I was fascinated. I woke up at dawn and confronted the “blasted” landscape of Sudbury; then we spent the better part of that day arching around the shield with its piney forests and little tiny villages where the train sometimes stopped. Both my transcontinental trains had “real” tablecloth diners. The food was not exotic and began to repeat itself before Vancouver but it was good: hamburgers with buns grilled in butter, spaghetti, that kind of thing. The prices were reasonable. The seating was not first-come-first served but consisted of three “seatings” for dinner, like on a cruise ship. I chose the third because we could hang around afterwards and smoke. I was really impressed by the professionalism and considerateness of the train staff. My first sleeping-car attendant was a college-age man who made sure I had all the creature comforts. He was also modest to a fault; didn’t hit me up for a tip when he left the train in Winnipeg, but I had heard ahead of time that tipping before he left was the right thing, so I did. I was also impressed with the loving care that had been given to my sleeping-car’s refurbishment. It was clean as a whistle and was a full-step more elaborate and impressive than Amtrak’s remodeling of the Heritage fleet. I saw carpet-and-quarter-round used next to the floor instead of peel-and-stick fake wood trim, for example. As a first-class passenger I had certain privileges, like access to the bar car. But a class structure was evident. Besides us in first class, there were essentially two classes of coach, if you will: people riding in daynighter-type cars who had paid a premium over coach were treated with courtesy and respect, but the conductor had no patience at all with some of the people from plain-old-coach. Turns out some of the younger guys were pass riders, a group the trainmen hated, and they practically “frog marched” them to and fro the diner—their only chance at penetrating the first-class fortress. The Canadian Rockies my northern-route CN line train crossed lacks the manicured park setting of the southern, or CP route. Sometimes the mountains were beautiful; at other times they resembled God’s biggest quarry—more striking than attractive. The biggest travel disappointment I found was the dome car: it was simply impossible to see out of it! Not from dirt, but apparently it had either been refurbished with Plexiglas that then got rough treatment and scarred; either that or something was very hinky about the glass. As I’m sure many of you know, a long train trip is conducive to making new acquaintances, especially with a lounge car to chat in. There were other Americans on the train, mostly the early-retired or the occasional cat like me who loved trains and was lured north by the bargain fares. One young lady from Australia who was on the train helped me find cheap lodging in Vancouver. Coming back from Vancouver, I was on what was obviously the old Canadian with its lightweight equipment. I booked a lower berth because I had never traveled in a “section” before. Just as comfortable as a roomette, I thought, but unfortunately the forward bulkhead creaked like crazy! I was used to it by the second night, though. I believe the rear-end observation-car-with-dome is what is called the Park series, but I’m not sure. If anything the car was more social than the one on the CN route. Service was just fine, and remnants of an earlier life of passenger railroading were apparent in the observation area, which had not yet been refurbished but was clean. I remember in particular the blonde desk-and-chair suite against the fore wall, with its ink well and cubicles suitable to hold stationery, post cards or telegrams. I imagined what it must have been like 25 years earlier, with Marilyn Monroe or maybe Prime Minister (“Deef the Chief”) Diefenbaker riding in style. Truly a nearly vanished way of life, and it went away so quickly. Disregarding the socializing, the magnificent scenery was worth the trip all by itself. This time the dome on the observation car was in great shape, and one had to wait one’s turn to get into it for a while. The crew was tolerant of the after-dark crowd but had to throw us out of the dome at midnight: none of us had realized that there were people occupying rooms directly below us. Nonetheless, the amenities were outstanding: I played bingo after dinner in the diner and the following day had the best omelet of my life while passing Lake Shuswop(sp??). Would it surprise you to hear that the chef was French Canadian? I learned a lot on the trip about the country and its resources. The number of freight trains going to and fro, humping raw materials and auto racks, was astonishing to me.. The COFC revolution was not yet obvious, but the CP’s role in connecting the Orient and eastern North America was. Never a dull moment: shortly after crossing the Continental Divide the train passed a full work crew who had obviously just gotten off the track to let us by. The sight of 20 sweaty topless Canadian men waving at the train had quite an effect on the female contingent, I don’t mind telling you! Banff was just as pretty as the postcards and we had a longish stop there. Now, figure this: the post office was on strike but nonetheless one lady was holding down the fort, selling stamps, and warning us that there was no telling how long it would be before our mail could leave the country. (My friends got their postcards about three weeks later.) I’m such a jinx you’d better check with me before your Canadian trip to make sure I’m not up there disrupting the economy. A late-night Calgary arrival found me needing a room for the night so I could sightsee the next day. Information sent me to the nearest hotel, which was a grand old railroad hotel basically clipped to the train station. As with all the other service staff I encountered on the trip, the room reservations clerk was extremely solicitous at my comfort. He asked if I wouldn’t mind taking the last room, the salesmen’s room, which has full of display material of the kind a salesmen needed to show his wares. I happily took the room and the pipe-rack clothes carts didn’t bother me a bit. The room was HUGE, not only large but high-ceilinged. Slightly eccentric, perhaps, but nonetheless a bit of luxury stumbled onto by mistake. It was east out of Regina, a division stop, that I reached the height of my trip: a cab ride. All I had had to do was ask one of the trainmen; who got in touch with the engineer and fireman for their okay. In what I was beginning to recognize was classic Canadian modesty, the engineer talked down the prairie view and the old equipment. Just the week before he had had the run over the mountains; squeezed in with the operators was an entire American flight crew including pilot! The engineer also apologized for the “poky” (his word) equipment, since the elderly EMD loco’s (F7’s??) were limited to winter speeds lest the steam line break. I got to toot the horn and see what must have been thousands of prairie dogs go scuttling away. Apologize?? I was in hog heaven. I flew home from Winnipeg with a million memories and a fistful of Canadian dollars; now made obsolete because of the Loon coin. Sadly, as we know the Canadian transcontinental trains don’t run every day; I understand the CP route isn’t operated at all in the winter. How sad to think that the fantastic traveling experience I had is now limited to people willing to pay US$5,000-plus for the Royal Canadian. As a result of the trip I became a converted Canadaphile and have visited the country several times since, but none so memorably as my transcontinental trip.
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